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Author of over 40 books published on Amazon, including The Crimson Horror series and The Great and Immortal Painters’ Stories series.
Dedicated to sharing insights into art, culture, literature, and creative expression through writing, lectures, media, and content creation.
Release
date:4 September 2015 (Venice International
Film Festival), 11 November 2015 (France)
Staff
Director:
Alexander Sokurov
Produced by: Els Vandevorst, Thomas Kufus, Pierre-Olivier
Bardet, Olivier Père
Screenplay:Alexander Sokurov
Music:Murat Kabardokov
Cinematography:Bruno Delbonnel
Edited
by: Alexei Jankowski, Hansjörg Weißbrich
Cast
Louis-Do de Lencquesaing as Jacques
Jaujard
Vincent Nemeth as Napoléon Bonaparte
Benjamin Utzerath as Franz von
Wolff-Metternich
Johanna Korthals Altes as Marianne
Summary
"Francofonia" is a 2015
internationally co-produced drama film directed by Alexander Sokurov.
It is the story of Jacques Jaujard,
director of the Louvre, and Count Franz von Wolff-Metternich, Nazi Occupation
officer, who were enemies then collaborators, whose alliance during the Nazi
occupation would be the driving force behind the preservation of the Louvre's
works.
The film was screened in the Main
competition section of the 72nd Venice International Film Festival and in the
Masters section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, as well as it
won the Mimmo Rotella Award at Venice. Variety magazine defined the film as
"dense and enriching meditation on the Louvre, especially its status
during World War II."
Movie
Review
“Deeply subjective
non-fiction film from Alexander Sokurov”
“Liberte, Egalite,
Fraternite”
“The Louvre in
Poetry”
“A decent
compendium piece to Russian Ark”
Interesting
stories about the film
1. During production, the film was
often rumored to have been shot in a single take, a technique shot in one
long take using a single camera, making it an ideal sequel to Aleksandr
Sokurov's previous museum film "Russian Ark" (2002). In the end,
director Sokurov chose a more traditional editing technique to tell the story.
Currently, I am
introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the
title “Interesting
Art Stories”.
The 59th story is “The Gleaners”by Jean-François Millet.
“The Gleaners” is an oil
painting by Jean-François Millet, completed in 1857.
Self-Portrait, Jean-François Millet (c.1840-1841)
The painting, depicting three peasant
women gleaning in a wheat field after the harvest, is famous for its
sympathetic portrayal of the lowest classes of rural society at the time, and
therefore it was received poorly among the French upper classes.
Before the painting, a vertical
painting of the image was first made in 1854 and an etching in 1855. Millet
exhibited the painting at the Paris Salon in 1857, which immediately received
negative criticism from the middle and upper classes, who viewed its subject with
suspicion.
Etching of The Gleaners, 1855
Having come out of the French
Revolution of 1848, these wealthy classes saw the painting as glorifying the
lower classes. The depiction of the working class in the painting destabilized
the upper class because it meant that the upper class would be overthrown if
the lower class, much outnumbered by the upper class, were to revolt. At that
time, the French Revolution was still vivid in the minds of the upper class, so
the painting was not perceived well.
The painting was also criticized
for its large size of 84 x 112 centimeters. At the time, the painting was too
large for a painting depicting labor, because the canvas of the size was
usually used for the painting for religious or mythological themes.
Although gleaning was not a new
subject for the painting, Millet’s work was a candid statement of rural
poverty, and not biblical piety. There is only a contrast between the poverty
symbolized by the peasant women gleaning in the foreground and the richness of
the abundant harvest in the sun shining beyond, and the biblical sense of
community and compassion doesn't exist at all.
After the Salon, the poor Millet
negotiated with an Englishman named Binder, and sold the painting for 3,000
francs, much lower than his asking price of 4,000 francs, and Millet tried to
keep the miserable price a secret.
Although “The Gleaners” received
almost bad reviews during his life, public appreciation of his work steadily
broadened after his death in 1875. In 1889, the painting, then owned by banker Ferdinand
Bischoffsheim, was sold for 300,000 francs at auction. Less than a week later,
it was announced that Champagne maker Jeanne-Alexandrine Louise Pommery had
taken over the painting.
Jeanne-Alexandrine Louise Pommery
Upon the death of Madame Pommery in 1891, and following her will, the painting was donated to the Louvre. It is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Musée d'Orsay
“The Gleaners” is one of Millet's
most famous paintings. The image of women bending and gleaning was often
paraphrased in works of artists such as Pissarro, Renoir, Seurat, and van Gogh.
Also influenced by the painting were Honoré Daumier and Edgar Degas’"Laundresses"
and Gustave Caillebotte’s"The Floor Scrapers".
The Laundress, Honoré Daumier (c.1863)
The Laundresses, Edgar Degas (c.1874-76)
The Floor Scrapers, Gustave Caillebotte (1875)
The painting provides evidence of
Millet's role as a social critic. The depiction of three bending, gleaning poor
women, in contrast to the workers and abundant crops in the background of the
painting, demonstrates his concern for the poorest people around Barbizon and
its neighbor, Chailly.
Studies tracing the transformation of
rural France in the nineteenth century show that little change in peasant life occurred
beyond northern France and Paris until the last quarter of the century. Thus,
Millet's expression to represent class strife on a large farm in the paintings,
were quite unique and modern considering the 1850s.
The painting inspired the 2000 film
“The Gleaners and I” directed by Agnes Varda.
The Gleaners and I
The film also inspired 2019 studio
album “The Gleaners” by American jazz bassist Larry
Grenadier.
On every Thursday, I am
introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the
title “Interesting Art Stories”.
The 25th story for this week is “Et
in Arcadia ego” by the French Baroque artist Nicolas Poussin.
Nicolas Poussin
“Et in
Arcadia ego”, also known as “The Arcadian Shepherds” is a painting by Nicolas
Poussin, the major painter of the Classicism and French Baroque era, completed
in 1638. It depicts a pastoral scene of shepherds gathering around a tomb and
is currently held by the Louvre.
Louvre Museum
Poussin painted two versions
of the subject under the same title. The first version painted in 1627 is now
held at Chatsworth House in England. The painter who painted this theme earlier
than Poussin was Italian painter Guercino circa 1618–1622.
Et in Arcadia ego, Guercino (c. 1618–1622)
The usual interpretation of
the title of the painting is “I” means Death and “Arcadia” means a utopian
place. Hence, it would be a memento mori, an artistic or symbolic reminder of
the inevitability of death.
During Antiquity, many Greeks lived in cities close
to the sea. However, only Arcadians who lived in the middle of the Peloponnese
lived a shepherd life because they were far from the sea. Thus, Arcadia symbolized
pure, rural and idyllic life.
But Poussin's biographer
André Félibien interpreted the phrase to mean that "the person buried in
this tomb lived in Arcadia". This means that the person also once enjoyed
the pleasures of life on earth, and this interpretation was also common in the
18th and 19th centuries.
In Arcadia's idyllic
settings, the first appearance of a tomb with a memorial inscription appears in
Virgil's Eclogues.
Virgil
The first version of Poussin's painting is believed to have
been commissioned as a rework of Guercino's version. It is much more Baroque
style than the later version, characteristic of his early work. In the first
version, the shepherds are actively reading the inscriptions on the tomb with
curious expressions, and the shepherdess on the left is dressed in a very
different style from the shepherdess in the later version.
Poussin's 1627 version of the Arcadian Shepherds, Chatsworth House
Also, for the later
version, it has a much more geometric composition than the first version, the
figures are much more contemplative, and the mask-like face of the shepherdess
follows the conventions of the Classical "Greek profile".
A sculptured version of this
painting is the mid-18th century marble relief, part of the Shepherds Monument
in the garden at Shugborough House in Staffordshire, England.
The Shugborough relief
The Shepherds Monument
The Shugborough inscription
is a sequence of letters, O U O S V A V V, written between the letters D and M
carved on the Shepherds Monument. It is one of the world's most
difficult-to-decipher ciphertexts that no one has ever deciphered
satisfactorily.
The eight letters 'OUOSVAVV', framed by the letters 'DM' in Shugborough inscription
The authors of the book
"The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" published in 1982 claimed that
Poussin was a member of the Priory of Sion and that "The Arcadian
Shepherds" he painted contained hidden meanings of esoteric significance.
Book cover of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail"
In 2003, Dan Brown copied many elements of "The Holy Blood and the Holy
Grail" in his bestselling novel "The Da Vinci Code", but made no
mention of the Shugborough inscription. However, this book aroused a new
interest in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
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